Japanese Animation and New Media
Lecture Four: Chapter Six: Full Animation
Second, he uses what he calls the ‘peg-hole technique’ where he shifts the angle or axis of movement from moment to moment, which not only introduces a degree of roughness and wild energy into the movement but also serves to impart a sense of mass and gravity to the character and thus a sense of a relation between character and world.
In sum, even though Otsuka Yasuo is not necessarily doing full character animation in the sense of images per second, he finds a way to sustain the ideal of full character animation, which gives viewers the impression of a character full of energy and vitality who is determined to act on things in the world.
Miyazaki’s debt to Otsuka Yasuo’s character animation is clear in Castle in the Sky whose boy hero Pazu is very much like the boy hero Conan of Mirai shônen Konan (Future Boy Conan). Castle in the Sky uses techniques of angling the axis of movement to impart of a sense of characters who remain orientated toward the earth even when they appear to leave it behind. Even though the character animation is not full in classic manner or in accordance with the Disney standard of 18 drawings per second, the ideal of full animation is in evidence in how the film strives to ground the relation between moving character (actions) and the world.
This sort of full character action is not cinematism in itself. But it conventionally lends itself to cinematism in that we now have a character whose actions in the world feel directed toward acting on objects in the world to achieve certain goals. It implies cause-and-effect action in accordance to natural laws. In addition, the conventions of cinema create expectations for closed compositing in conjunction with full ‘cinematic’ action, which may tip the scales toward cinematism. But part of the surprise of action lies in the ease with which physical laws such as gravity can be ignored or re-imagined. Bodies, for instance, are already weightless. The question is then one of how character animation negotiates between cinematism and animetism.
